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OPENING ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE TEACHERS AND PUPILS 

OF THE 



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Summer Normal School 



JULY S, 1901 



BY 



ALATAU T. ATKINSON 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 
FOR THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII 



HONOLULU : 

HAWAIIAN STAR PRINT 

igoi. 



OPENING ADDRESS 



DELIVERED BEFORE 

THE TEACHERS AND PUPILS 

OF THE 



Summer Normal School 

JULY 8, 1901 



BY 

ALATAU T. ATKINSON 

SUPERINTENDENT OF PUBLIC INSTRUCTION 
FOR THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII 



HONOLULU : 

HAWAIIAN STAR PRINT 

igoi. 



A'^ 



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Digitized by the Internet Archive 
in 2011 with funding from 
The Library of Congress 



http://www.archive.org/details/openingaddressdeOOatl<i 



In accordance with a motion passed at the opening 
meeting of the Summer School held July 8, 1901, the 
following address, which was then given, is now printed. 
The desire on the part of the mover and seconder of the 
motion was that each teacher on the Islands should haye 
a copy. In compliance with this request a copy 13 hereby 
forwarded. 

Honolulu, H. T., July 15, 1901. 



Thirteen years ago in the room next to this I 
addressed a number of our teachers. It was the first 
Teachers' Institute that had been held since Dr. Arm- 
strong's time and that meant many years, for Dr. Arm- 
strong died in i860. From that Teachers' Institute of 
1888 many things have grown. At the time it was held 
the teaching force of the Islands was not united as it is 
today. Few teachers were acquainted with the work of 
other teachers. Each worked on his or her own line, and 
there was very little esprit de corps. But an impetus was 
given at that first reunion which has not ceased. Many 
able hands later took hold of the movement which was 
there instituted and the results are to be found in our 
educational advancement of today. Mind you, I do not 
consider our educational advancement very extensive, for 
it is easy to point out our numerous short-comings, but 
we have advanced, we mean to advance, and the advance- 
ment lies in your hands, ladies and gentlemen. We of the 
old school have laid foundations. It is for you to build 
up the superstructure. 

When those ladies and gentlemen assembled together 
in that room thirteen years ago there was no normal 
school. The suggestion of a normal school was made 
almost with bated breath. There did not then seem any 
opportunity for its being instituted for years. The idea 
was that Hawaii must depend for her teachers from 
abroad. She always had done, and she might keep on 
doing so. What teachers we had of Hawaiian birth had 
done their best to acquire what they could, but they had 
no accredited place of training to go to. Lahainaluna 



was our only institution where Hawaiian teachers might 
be trained and it was not then, any more than it is now, 
a normal school. In point of fact Lahainaluna is a tradi- 
tion. A tradition which may be revivified, but which 
really stands now as a tradition. Liberal appropriations 
would make it an institution. Starved as -it is, it is only 
reaching the condition which Sir Walter Scott puts into 
the mouth of Evan Maccombich, that sturdy and uncom- 
promising follower of Vich Ian Vohr. Said that worthy : 

"It will be just like Duncan MacGirdie's mare, if your 
ladyships' please; he wanted to use her by degrees to 
live without meat, and just as he had put her on a straw 
a day, the poor thing died." 

Lahainaluna has not yet got to the straw a day, but it 
is not far from it. 

Well times have come and times have gone, and we 
have a normal school. It grew. It commenced with a 
class after school hours which was held by Prof. M. M. 
Scott, and good work was done under very adverse cir- 
cumstances. Then came a tentative attempt at a normal 
school, which was anything but satisfactory, and finally 
the normal school under Professor Wood found its home 
in this building and has established itself as an institu- 
tion which will endure. It may and indeed must find 
another home, for the present building is unsuited for its 
present purposes. It will have many other teachers, one 
race dying down and another coming on, as the corn 
follows the poppy and the poppy the corn. But whatever 
its changes, it will be the institution upon which the Ter- 
ritory of Hawaii will depend for its primary teachers, that 
noble band which starts out to mould the crude brain of 
the budding state into lives which shall do credit to the 
great aggregation of states whose handmaid we now are. 
Any community which depends for its instruction from 
abroad, is not a properly self supporting community. 
Brilliant and exceptional minds we may call in, but the 
ordinary work of instruction should be done by our own 
people as soon as possible. In this I am a true home 
ruler. But before our own people can undertake this 
work, they must be trained, and this training is offered to 
you here by the Commissioners of Education. 



That the opportunity has been appreciated is evidenced 
by the number of pupils who have passed through the 
normal school and now hold positions as teachers in 
every part of the Islands. At the present moment fifty 
of our own normal school graduates are filling positions 
in schools in every part of the Islands. Wherever they 
may be, they stand out as a beacon light, understanding 
sometimes fully, sometimes less fully, the problems that 
are before them, but always being clear as to their duty 
and their ideal. Our own normal school teachers are of 
immense value to us who are for the moment guiding 
the education of the Territory, and we all have the utmost 
hope that from among them will rise a truly Hawaiian 
Educational Light. For I have the faith and belief in 
me that during this century we are now entering upon, 
Hawaii will be to the new world, that great Pacific world 
of mingled Oriental and Occidental civilization, what 
Rhodes was in the time of Caesar's youth, a spot to which 
every man who aspired to culture had to come, in order 
to gain the final educational polish. It is a far jump from 
this Normal School upon whose floor I stand today, and 
that high pinnacle of culture, but it is a possible one, and 
we are now laying the foundation stones of the future 
superstructure. 

But you have not come here to listen to old tales of 
how this institution took its origin, or to listen to the pro- 
phecies and aspirations of pretty well worn out old edu- 
cational warriors, of whom I may be a somewhat feeble 
example. What you have to think about is the present. 
Youth lives in the present, youth wants to act in the 
present, and it is the present that it wishes to meet. "How 
can you guide us to meet the problems of the day?" Is 
the burden of your request, and it is a request which must 
be heard and — met. 

And first let me ask, why are you here? Primarily 
there can be only one answer, because you must eat; 
That seems a very bald way of putting the matter. The 
proper thing to say is, that you have come together in 
the hope that you may uplift your fellow men and women 
of the future. Nothing of the kind. You have chosen 
a means of livelihood, or have drifted towards a means 



of livelihood, just as a carpenter, an engineer, a butcher, 
an artist, or a sailor does. Vv e will come to other points 
later on, but primarily you simply come here because of 
the announcement which was made in the dim past, "in 
the sweat of thy face shalt thou eat bread." Work is 
the tenure upon which we hold life, and happily work is 
the blessing of life. Work comes to you as it comes to 
all, by immutable law, and work can be ennobled or it 
can be degraded, as the person who undertakes it chooses. 
We can work ill or we can work well, but work we must. 
If we work well people say of us that we rise, Dut the 
so-called rising is only the recognition of our own honest 
application, if we work badly, people say we sink, but 
this is only the natural result of bad work, slovenly work. 

You have, then, come here because you know that to 
keep your place in the world you must work, but in com- 
ing here you have shown that you know more. You 
have shown that you understand that to do your work 
well you must be properly trained for it. You cannot 
jump into the arena of life all armed like the fabled god- 
dess Athene from the head of Zeus. Training is more 
important in the profession of teaching than in any pro- 
fession, because we have so much delicate material to 
manipulate, but it has been almost tne last profession 
in which we have given proper care and consideration 
to training. 

It was not a hundred years ago on the mainland and 
it was but a quarter of a hundred years ago on these 
Islands when it was considered that anyone who could 
read and write and knew a little arithmetic was amply 
qualified as a teacher. If the person had utterly failed in 
every walk of life, he was very apt, on that account, to 
be considered even more eligible. But we have learned 
better than that. We know that to be successful and to 
be valuable the teacher must be trained. 

It is true that there are gifted people who can be suc^ 
cessful apparently without training, but if you talk with 
them they will tell you how much they have lost by lack 
of training, and how their great gifts have been drawn 
upon recklessly and needlessly, and themselves worn out, 
because they had not had training. You may have the 



most mag-nificent tenor voice in the world, but it will 
never be a really valuable organ unless it is trained. You 
may possess a wonderful thoroughbred horse, but it will 
never successfully compete with others unless it is train- 
ed. Training is not success, but training furnishes the 
key to success. 

If the law of nature sends us all, and you among them, 
to work in order that we may eat, the law of civilization 
gives us many avenues in which we can work, and adds 
something higher; the satisfaction of work well done. 
We can choose our course. There are for us countless 
paths which we can hew out through the ever teeming, 
perennial forest of life, and we can take a just pride in 
seeing that our little path is smoothly made, the sides 
properly trimmed, the direction true, so that when the 
great Master receives the report of our Httle effort, we 
may hear the words "Well done, thou good and faithful 
servant." 

By what means we choose our avocation, I cannot telj. 
Men and women have taken what came to their hands 
and fashioned themselves to suit what they had taken 
up. But more and more as our civilization advances have 
opportunities come for absolute choice and not accidental 
drift. Thus a young man or a young woman can sav I 
will be a doctor, and forthwith study for the medical 
profession. Another will say, I will be a lawyer, and 
forthwith the law school opens its doors. There are 
many professions open, all ofifering glittering oppor- 
tunities, all tending to the uplifting of the human race, 
all giving opportunity of the highest mental activity, but 
there is one which I consider higher than all others. The 
world, at present, does not rank it above all others by any 
means, but it will do so in time. That profession is the 
one upon which you are preparing to enter, or for which 
having entered, you are now trying to improve your- 
selves. 

What can be grander than the idea that the work done 
now is going to be impressed upon the generation that 
follows. The teacher is no worker in metal who stamps 
out with his hammer and chisel a beautiful statuette or a 
graceful gawd for some fair lady's neck. These last. 



lO 



sometimes for centuries, but they are dead things. — they 
are beautiful, they show human skill but they have not 
life. The teachers' precepts live, if not in one mind, still 
in another. There is a divine essence in teaching, if we 
can only get hold of it. The teacher holds the torch of 
knowledge to guide the faltering footsteps' of childhood 
and youth into the full light of day of manhood and 
womanhood. And the teachings go on. The teacher 
may be dead but his spirit shall live among some of his 
pupils. 

Yes, it is a grand profession this teaching, and all who 
enter upon it should do so with earnestness and with 
purpose. Skill in mechanics, skill in the arts of music, 
sculpture and painting may all be admirable, are admir- 
able, but the skill which can open the human mind, the 
skill which can lead the budding intellect and set it at 
work seeking after the higher ideals, the skill which deals 
with life here, and stamps upon it what may influence life 
hereafter, is worthy of our highest commendation. It is 
no light thing to be a teacher. Few realize how much 
good and how much harm they can do as teachers. 

Addressing you, as the budding teachers of these beau- 
tiful Islands of ours, I w^ould earnestly urge upon you the 
responsibilities which you have. It is no holiday work 
that you are undertaking — it is the making or marring 
of human lives, the lives of the men and women of the 
future which you will have in your care. But the greater 
the responsibility, the greater the glory. Duty done, and 
well done ,closes life nobly. 

You who are entering the profession now, are entering 
it in auspicious times. You are offered a course of study 
which is calculated to make you useful from the moment 
you put your foot into any school room of the Territory 
of Hawaii. You will not have to waste your own time, 
and what is far more valuable tne time of your pupils in 
trying to find out how to deal with our polyglot popula- 
tion. You will know what to do and you will Know how 
to do it. But having acquired what you do here, you 
have by no means accomplished what you ought to do. 
Though you may walk out of these rooms with a diploma 
or with a certificate your education has but just com- 



li 

menced. This normal school has after all only taught 
you how to teach yourselves to teach. The work is m 
your own hands. No one can make you a teacher, any 
more than any one can make any one else a painter, a 
carpenter, a musician or a bricklayer. Any person can 
be trained towards any of these things, and without train- 
ing the results would be meager and unsatisfactory, but 
success in any of these must come from ourselves, if 
we know how, we can succeed. The object of the normal 
school is to show you how. 

In carrying on your life work, let me give you one 
piece of advice. Keep your mmds broad. Mingle with 
your fellowmen and women, don't get into a scnolastic 
class apart. It is the greatest and most fatal danger that 
assails the school teacher's life. It is what causes people 
to look askance upon the profession and speak of its 
members as visionaries. 

There can be no doubt of the narrowing influence of 
the school teacher's life. The school teacher must be to 
a certain extent an autocrat. The word of the teacher 
has to be law in the little realm under command. The 
smaller the school, it may safely be said, the more auto- 
cratic the teacher, because there is less to counteract the 
teachers' will. In the outer life we are forever mingling 
with our equals and our superiors. The scQi ol teacher's 
life is forever devoted to those who must be by the nature 
of things mentally inferior for a time, and who are always 
more or less under his arbitrary authority. The result 
of this upon the mind is usually very narrowing. It is the 
tendency of human nature to seek the pleasant rather 
than the unpleasant, and it is but natural to remain in the 
atmosphere where there is no contradiction, rather than 
to seek an atmosphere where there is contradiction. 
School teachers whether male or female should seek the 
society of their fellowmen as much as possible, iliey 
should meet and should be acquainted with "all sorts and 
conditions of men." They have in their care children v/ho 
come from all kinds of homes. In the public schools of 
America nearly all meet on a platform of equality. In the 
public schools of this portion of the United States chil- 
dren meet upon an equality of race which is unknown 



12 

on the mainland. In our schools the despised Chinese 
of California takes his seat and competes with the Hawai- 
ian or the Caucasian and frequently beats both. The 
true school teachers will never be satisfied with the edu- 
cation which we give them in our little Normal School. 
They will regard that as merely being upon the rung of 
the ladder — no branch of knowledge can come amiss to 
school teachers. The mines of literature buried in other 
languages assist them. Science assists them, mechanical 
invention assists them, art and culture assist them, and 
above all the knowledge and love of mankind assist them. 
The school teacher should know child-nature, but to 
know child-nature and to understand it, the teacher 
should know man-nature, for "The child is the father of 
the man." To pretend to know and understanc child- 
nature without understanding the development of that 
nature in the future, is to merely get possession of a 
square of a map and not know what may be the accom- 
panying squares. A teacher thus cannot be too broad 
in his knowledge. The more he knows not only in a 
literary sense, but the more knowledge he has of the 
world, the better teacher he will be, the better guide to 
the future generation. 

Watch words are used by all armies. You are a part 
of the army of education, an uplifting army, an army far 
grander than that which is tricked out in military array, 
and glitters with all the pomp and panoply of war. Such 
an army means destruction. Your army means regenera- 
tion. The school teacher is the regenerating power, the 
uplifting power, the civilizing power. Personally he may 
be no more than the coral insect. As a mass he can 
build walls of civilization as firm and abiding as the great 
barrier reef of Australia. 

I have told you that the teacher should be broad both 
in mind and culture and now I will tell you what to do 
with that breadth. Concentrate. Let that be your watch- 
word. Sweep as widely as 3'-ou can over the field of hu- 
man knowledge and then bring the fruits home, as the 
bee, which roams afar over the flower-starred fields and 
sips the sweets of countless blossoms, yet returns to its 
hive and concentrates in one tiny cell the aroma and 



13 

sweetness of rose, violet, eglantine and a myriad ex- 
quisite perfumes. Concentrate. Learn as much as you 
can, but give out your knowledge in terse and under- 
standable form. 

Believe me, children have little time to waste. If we 
are to educate them well, while they are under our tui- 
tion we must lose not a moment. There is a saying that 
the road to destruction is paved with good intentions. 
I would say the road to that same place is paved with 
wasted time. When a teacher enters a schoolroom the 
aim should be to make the utmost of the time at his or 
her disposal. When we are writing we have a main idea, 
and the strength or weakness of our work depends upon 
whether we make every word tell upon that idea or not. 
A lost word is a lost force. So in teaching — a lost lesson 
or a lost illustration is a lost force. A loss to the teacher 
and a terrible loss to the taught. Concentrate. Lose no 
force that you can command. Don't waste energy by 
diffuseness. Know what you want to accomplish and 
then do it. 

You should have before you three main objects. Yoa 
must train your children morally, intellectually, physi- 
cally. I am not sure that I have put these words in the 
right order. Perhaps I ought to say morally, physically 
and intellectually. 

MORALLY. For no people can rise, no people can 
be great unless morakly is their corner stone. It was 
looseness and absence of morality which wrecked the 
Babylonian Empire, which sapped the intellect and great- 
ness of Greece and overthrew Rome. It is upon morality 
that the Teutonic races of which the Anglo-Saxon is an 
heir, have built their power and greatness. The founda- 
tions of the power of the United States are based not on 
. armies, not on culture, not on wealth, but on morality — 
the purity of the home-tie. Without this we would 
build but a palace of AUadin to vanish at a finger touch 
upon the magic lamp, or we would be cultivating those 
apples of Sodom, beautiful to the eye, which turn to dust 
and ashes in the mouth. 



14 

PHYSICALLY. Without physique man is but a 
crippled creature. We must urge the children whom 
we are in charge of to exercise and keep in good order 
their bodies, those "Temples of the soul." If the soul 
is beautiful, the casket within which it is lodged should 
be beautiful too. 

INTELLECTUALLY. To this we are apt to give 
all our attention, and therefore I have given the other 
two needs the prior place. In the intellectual work' we 
must be most careful to use concentration, that watch- 
word I have given you. It is better to know a few things 
well than to have a smattering of many things and know 
none. And in this direction I would urge upon you the 
necessity of a thorough and accurate knowledge of lan- 
guage. With us, as Americans, English is our language, 
and the better we know it the better citizens we shall be. 
We have to teach those who do not know and understand 
our language, and until they do, they will never be true 
Americans. Concentrate therefore upon language, and 
make every lesson tend to purity of diction which will 
mean purity of thought. 

Such are a few ideas, strung together as they came up 
in my mind. They ar^ not couched in pedagogic style, 
their aim has been to avoid that and to think as much 
as possible from heart to heart. Teaching is no dry-as- 
dust profession. It is a living profession. It is the 
noblest profession in the world. If it is degraded, it is 
the human beings who essay it that degrade it. But we 
are aiming at its ideal heights. We may not reach those 
heights, but we can make a valiant struggle to reach 
them, and we can look from this poor school room and 
see the walls dissolve giving us a vista of the great future 
when mankind will be better and grander and happier 
and say we did our little mite to help forward the 
general good of this world and fit it for the world to 
come, where there shall be no more want or sorrow or 
misery or sin, but where there shall be everlasting happi- 
ness! 



LIBRARY OF CONGRESS 



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